The Don Quixote PieceScene 3

"And Pam said: 'I could teach it to someone else and
have you stand there and watch. You're a quick learner.'"

"God," said Lucia the French girl.

"It's two weeks before the show. Two weeks before the
show and she has a dancer limp out in the middle of rehearsal
unable to walk. And she's saying, 'I have a solo I need to
teach you tomorrow.'"

"I see."

"And then the next morning she talked to Mike and put me
in that little duet instead, the one with Tatiana, in the
second act..."

"Instead?"

"Yeah...the jumping one?... the jumping one! She tried
to teach it to us but I was limping through it the whole
time. It's my tendons. Remember at Ohio when that happened,
during that Ailey piece. I know it was my tendons because
when I got home Jacob attacked my foot with those hands of
his and they started loosening up and I could walk again."

"What hands!"

"Yeah. It was at the ball of my foot. This tendon here."
And Beth modeled her hand in proxy. "This one was very
knotted up. It was stretched so thin that if I had kept
walking on it it would have snapped. But Jacob managed to
loosen it up for me. Otherwise I wouldn't have made it
through the ten minutes of that jumping farce, to have it
knot up again, and then to have to tell her I was finished."

Beth halted. Beth sipped through a straw from the
margarita glass. She studied the orts in the plate of fried
mushrooms she had just so ravenously consumed, the plate that
Lucia the French girl had just so hungrily watched her
consume. The two of them sat in an airport lounge, Lucia's
leavings of lettuce. They were both alert and energized at
Lucia's sudden unplanned return.

"Well," Lucia the French girl said. "I am sorry."

"Yeah."

"But what hands, no?"

"Yeah, for real."

"Listen to me, my Beth, there is no man existing that is
made of stone."

And Beth nodded, smiling. "Least of all mine." And she
said this lightly still, still in the insouciant vein of
describing a trauma that has passed and been assimilated.
"You've seen how he gets. About ideas mostly, but..."

"But...there are no buts," Lucia interjected firmly.
"Think about it, my Beth. When has he been tested, this man
of yours? When have these ideas of his been challenged.
Look, is it not possible that these ideas are nothing more
than abstract ideas, theoretical, a pile of ideas over which
he thinks, but that which never have to face reality? Think
about it, my Beth. When have these ideas of his faced a real
woman of pink skin, a real woman of warm blood?"

And Beth's light mood clouded. She studiously moved
aside the wide-mouthed glass. She gazed perplexedly into
Lucia's glinting green eyes. Then she looked sidelong to the
bar, signaling suddenly for the fleshy waitress. This was
not something Beth had ever really considered, had ever
really thought to consider. She felt piqued by Lucia the
French girl suddenly. But in her fleeting resentment for her
friend she plowed through the thrust and toward a parry. She
would silence her with a proof! And searching...peering into
Lucia's glinting eyes...Beth found...none. She found, instead,
exactly what Lucia the French girl had posited: That she had
always reveled in the idea that her mate was impregnable,
that he was somehow immune to temptation because of his
philosophy and self-discipline; but that, no; no, his self-
discipline and philosophy had never really been challenged.
Suddenly, this self-discipline and philosophy seemed to her
less noble. Suddenly, her resentment for her friend yawed
toward anger. She would confess none of this to Lucia.

"Did you not read The Ophidia?" she finally rebutted,
tight-lipped.

Lucia the French girl nodded. "Yes. But real? Was it
real or something only from his imagination?"

"It was real, but before we married," she admitted. "And
there have been some poems since about this paradox of beauty
of his."

"Then the answer is no?" Lucia pressed.

Beth was beginning to hate her.

The fleshy waitress appeared.

"Two espressos, please," Beth murmured flatly.

The fleshy waitress yessed and removed the orts.

"He appreciates you and the others the way he did that
Ingres a few weeks back."

"Then...no?"

And Beth began fingering for a menthol from the pack
lying on the table. She did not reply.

"How is it possible then that you are so sure?" Lucia
demanded. "Do not give me this face of perturbation, my Beth.
You are affirming something of the superhuman, you see. You
cannot offer this to me and expect that I not feel a
necessity to question it, to react to it, even to contradict
it. And why do you believe so much in this strength of his
against temptation? Why do you believe so if you cannot
provide to me a single instance of its actuation?"

Beth drew on the cigarette and leaned back and
critically eyed her friend. Her hatred dissipated to anger
dissipating to pique. For she realized suddenly that this
conversation was just as theoretical and abstract as Jacob's
philosophy. Part of his approach, in fact, was to avoid
temptation so that there would not be tests, so that he
would not have to face such challenges. It was courting
defeat, he declared, to know your weaknesses well and still
expose them.

She said, "He has his ways of avoiding such temptations
in the first place," and exhaled. "And he has his ways of
dealing with them when they come. And as I said, it has
nothing to do with fidelity to me. It is all about his
control over himself, his control over his desires. It's his
higher self, he says, mastering his lower self. He says that
to give in to such a temptation is the spirit submitting to
the flesh. In fact, it is not the act itself that is the
sin, according to his ideas, but the breakdown of his will,
of his self-control. That's what he's so committed to, to his
will, not to me. And as I've said. I've seen his will
overcome amazing challenges, much greater ones than any woman
could offer."

And Lucia the French girl's eyebrows arched at this last
contention. She smiled slightly, dubiously; but then, "Very
well. Very well," she said in retreat. "It is a very noble
philosophy, my Beth. I am in complete accord there. But it
does not make of this man of yours something less than a man.
And there does not exist nowhere no man made of stone."